“Stronger than diamonds, more flexible than rubber, more conductive than copper, and so thin you can barely see it with the naked eye,” graphene is a new miracle material.
The inventors discovered the material playing around with sellotape…
The creation of graphene, a wonder material that promises to transform the future, is already the stuff of scientific legend. As a piece of brilliant serendipity it stands alongside the accidental discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming – and it might prove just as valuable.
Two Russian-émigré scientists at the University of Manchester, Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov, were playing about with flakes of carbon graphite in an attempt to investigate its electrical properties when they decided to see if they could make thinner flakes with the help of sticky Scotch tape... tape.
[Hat tip Charteris Woodturners]
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